Samantha Besson
Democratic Representation in and by International Organizations
International organizations (IOs) play a central role in contemporary international law-making: they institutionalize most of the processes through which international law is adopted today. From the perspective of the democratic legitimacy of international law, this raises the question of the conditions under which these IOs may be regarded as democratic representatives of the peoples of their Member States. Curiously, however, given its significant international and domestic implications, the democratic representativeness of IOs—as well as that of States and other public and private institutions within those IOs—does not seem to be a major concern in practice. Even more curiously, and in contrast to other issues of democratic legitimacy to which it is necessarily linked—such as participation or deliberation within IOs—representation has only rarely been addressed as such in scholarly debates. It is this gap in theory and practice that this volume aims to fill. It is the first to bring global democracy theorists and international lawyers into dialogue on the topic in English. This title is also available as open access on Cambridge Core.
Besson, S., Democratic Representation in and by International Organizations, ASIL International Legal Theory Series, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, August 2026.
ISBN: 9781009710558
Publication Date: August 2026
This book is available as open access thanks to the support of the Swiss National Science Foundation.
